Digital Transformations - Species of Memory: Rhetoric, Art, Pedagogy

Digital Transformations in the Classroom Walking, Autobiography, Memory Objects Hyperlinked Joshua Hussey Georgia Institute of Technology School of Literature, Media, and Communication General Purpose •  Describe the process of composition through memory and invention: how a creative process yields a critical analysis •  “Memory” is pattern identification; “invention” utilizes those patterns for production •  Value of multimodal assignments in comp class •  Traditional essay •  Electronic essay •  Empirical methods: Use personal experience for access to composition methods •  Procedural rhetoric: process-­‐based Follow presentation with PDFs: http://goo.gl/w0VEcs (images) On the title •  Walking: useful metaphor for narrative and story; accessible idea for teaching •  Autobiographical essay: useful process in the composition class •  “Memory objects hyperlinked”: think about memory in material terms, followed by a trajectory (hyperlink) that indicates the flow of an information structure Project description •  Task: write an autobiographical essay intersected by academic research •  Assignment objectives consider: •  1) memory as procedure; “procedural walk” •  2) memory as empirical “research” •  Kathleen Ryan’s “Memory, Literacy, and Invention: Reimagining the Canon of Memory for the Writing Classroom” (Composition Studies, 2004). Pdf here. •  Uses Toni Morrison’s Beloved to explain “rememoried” knowledge, and the process of remembering “something” •  Ryan writes, “‘rememory’ reveals the social and contextual aspects of memory and the generative roles of invention and imagination so important to the process of remembering” (39). •  Ryan interprets “rememory” in four dimensions (39): •  Memory material [thoughts and emotions attendant to images or events; stuff; “not a static storehouse” (40)] •  Imagination and interpretation [“imagination as creativity to explore past lives and experiences” (40)] •  Context and subjectivity [“time, place, and urgency” (41)] •  Transformation [recovering memory material, transforming understanding] •  Helps students to “write their worlds” (44) Procedure University of Georgia Georgia Institute of Technology (LMC) ENGL 1102 (20-­‐25 students) ENGL 1102 (25 students) Learning Community theme: Climate and Sports Standard Second-­‐Semester Course: content addressed memory Traditional essay form (paper submission) Multimodal essay (Web Log submission) Commonalities UGA GaTech Readings Engagement Reflection Expectation •  Common contemporary readings on memory, walking, and image use: Examples: Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others (2003, on image and atrocity); Rebecca Solnit Wanderlust (2000); W.G. Sebald The Emigrants (1992) •  Common engagement: all classes undertake the same procedure: walking and transcribing that walk •  Common reflection: on engagement with assignment •  Common expectation: drawing on personal experiences; using experiential “objects” as sites for academic research Classical Perceptions of Memory •  Canons of rhetoric: Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory, Delivery •  Memory systems [from Crowley and Hawhee’s Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students (2004)]: •  Artificial – as storage and for composition purposes •  for example, Aristotle’s peripatetic teaching style; Giulio Camillo’s memory theater, see Francis Yates The Art of Memory (1966) •  Cultural – “carefully organized depositories of common knowledge” (322); narratives of collective species •  Organizational – trained categories, simple systems (mnemonics) •  Literate systems: Books, Periodicals, Libraries •  Electronic: databases, storage solutions •  Long history in conversation with many categories of knowledge and information Discussion of Genre •  Web Logs: Serialized narrative •  Traditional essay: Sustained narrative •  Tone and register of essays (formal and informal, journalism) Maturity in Writing •  Challenge sources? •  Conventional conclusions? •  Transitions: causal or spatial? •  Questions of agency and authorship: passive agents, empirical absorptions •  Levels of awareness increased •  Surprise in narrative (discovery) Using objects to conduct research For the full assignment, research can be completed on individual objects, or on more abstract images or conditions. Student Example Indra Sofian’s “List of Considered Objects”: 1.) Metal sculpture on Tech Green 2.) Surveillance camera 3.) Open car door on a Jeep 4.) Tech Green 5.) Humans Vs. Zombie headband 6.) Tobacco Free Signs 7.) The Campanile 8.) A bench 9.) A red flower on the CULC rooftop gardens 10.) A black bike parked next to the CULC Indra’s full walk here. Essay Instructions – UGA Traditional Essay form, Hussey Spring 2014 Description: Think about the manner in which Rebecca Solnit and Edward Abbey, in the excerpts from Wanderlust and Desert Solitaire, reveal both information and personal detail. Their rhetorical style and content may be completely different, but both express an overt desire to be known through physical experience. For these writers and the other writers we’ve covered this semester, there is little that divides the spaces of the outside environment from the mechanisms of the observing mind. The material realm is, as Solnit writes, “a form of spatial theater [that is] also spiritual theater” (68). How do Abbey and Solnit navigate perspective differently? What is the purpose in choosing content that informs us as well as describes character? How do the mechanics of prose navigate from an object in the world—a material structure—into the judgments of the speaker, into the mind and memories of the speaker? What kind of directions are those shifts from the outside to the inside, from the landscape to the interior self—are they ascents or descents, or do you picture them entirely differently? How does the personality of the speaker dissolve when the writer moves into prose styles that inform and report? The quest for this essay is not to write a “spiritual narrative” necessarily, but to take on a similar task as Solnit or Abbey (and even Krakauer at times) and explore the rhetorical variety that should accompany a good travel narrative. Choose some adventure you have undertaken in your life and define its purposes, maneuvers, and outcomes. Research the environment through which your person moved and made decisions and challenge yourself to incorporate that research into your essay. Challenge yourself to find interesting ways of transitioning from personal details into the report of research. Requirements: —1600 words min, MLA style, standard font, print word count at end —3 external sources: 2 must be print books —at least 1 captivating image Essay Instructions – GT Multimodal Essay form, Hussey Spring 2014 Create, design, and supply content for a blog that emulates the styles from the Unit 2 readings. Coordinate reflective, autobiographical experience with sophisticated, scholarly research, and coordinate cogent writing with images and other multimedia design elements in order to demonstrate an understanding of visual rhetoric. Notes: -­‐-­‐ Entries must include images, including ones you have taken yourself -­‐-­‐ In addition to reliable information found through the Internet, entries must include or cite scholarly sources found through the library: cite 2 material books; cite 5 digital sources (ex. Journal article) -­‐-­‐ In your TSquare submission, you must include a short reflection on your blog, i.e. you will describe your blog’s direction and purpose. Up to 250 words. Project description: Consider how W.G. Sebald navigates perspective in The Emigrants. What is the purpose in choosing content that historically informs us as well as describes a particular character? How do the mechanics of Sebald’s prose navigate from an object in the world—a material structure—into the judgments of the speaker, into the mind and memories of the speaker? How do the photographs affect the narrative? How are they addressed: are they overt or unnamed? What kind of directions are those shifts from the outside to the inside, from the landscape to the interior self—are they ascents or descents, or do you picture them entirely differently? How does the personality of the speaker dissolve when the writer moves into prose styles that inform and report? How might you consider The Emigrants as an autobiographical work? Thinking about the methods in which we have viewed narrative during this unit, create your own blog engaging an autobiographical experience as well as experiences in which autobiography is subverted, i.e. “under cover.” How does the experience of walking in The Emigrants help Sebald craft his narrative? What happens to you when you take a walk? What kinds of objects do you encounter? What kinds of vertical intersections in the “horizontal” narrative do those objects afford? What happens when you begin to explore them? How can you represent those objects with writing? With image? Other media? Rubric and Assessment notes: -­‐-­‐See assessment rubric -­‐-­‐ Topic selection [quality, process] -­‐-­‐ Image and media use [significance, appropriate arguments and claims] -­‐-­‐ Research [significance] -­‐-­‐ Writing mechanics -­‐-­‐ Synthesis of research and writing Examples of Traditional Essays •  Notable affordances in this form: •  Kimberly Case, “Brazil: A Mosaic” •  Depth of research •  Extended discussion of psychological relevance “Dad and I continued up the mountain path, the air around us growing quieter with every step, and the door of the main monastery in view. From the outside, the view is simple: a large, ornate door maybe 3 meters high, with the wall around it blending into the mountainside. There are shallow shelves carved into the walls about 3 meters up to either side of the door. These, my father would explain, were for good luck: if you could lob a pebble from the floor up and onto the shelf (only 3 inches deep) then you would get one wish. In two dozen tries I could never get a pebble to stay, and my dad landed three in a row. He gave me one of his wishes…” (Ohanian). “The source of my headache was unknown, the contenders being the stick shift, speed, and rapid turns, of course not ruling out the humidity and heat. I knew that this was supposed to be a magical moment, but I refrained from spending too much time looking out the window…” (Case). •  Shant Ohanian, “Up the Mountain” •  Sarah Wilson, “Voyager” •  Will Kirk, “Finding Myself at the Paper Mill” “Everyone thrives for the destination: the sites, souvenirs, and pictures. And yet in the end, the journey imprints the memory most. It bears the moments of quietness and simple fulfillment between lavish abundance and rich experiences that imprint our memory…” (Wilson). “I see the construction equipment to the left of the path, but my attention is drawn to the right as I finally arrive at The Mill. Majestic as ever in the morning sun, the ruins are strikingly large, despite the fact that I have grown since childhood. The stone is infested with weeds and vines, but they play an important role in the overall effect. The Mill, built between 1853 and 1855, has gone through so much trial and abuse that it seems only appropriate to allow it to endure unscathed (Golden 56). Scaling down the imposing structure to the banks, I look back to see the trickling waterfall where my dad showed us to rinse off after long hikes...” (Kirk). Examples of Multimodal Essays •  Notable affordances in this form: •  Good examples of seriality •  Serial narratives •  Rachel Jinks: http://blogs.iac.gatech.edu/rjinks/ •  Digital research •  Nicolas Botero Vivas: http://blogs.iac.gatech.edu/boteromemorypath/ •  Electronic navigation •  Sam Duke: http://blogs.iac.gatech.edu/samdsblog/ •  Grace Hinckley: http://blogs.iac.gatech.edu/hinckleyenglish/ “This phenomena of humanity maintains that we are drawn to differences and that we ourselves endeavor to be different from society – to stand out in the crowd while still remaining a part of the whole. People are attracted to color and motion and shape in a world of gray-­‐scale and linear stagnation. When I see an object, I am inundated with the memories that I have built up and associated with similar objects in the past; I assume this process of observing a new environment and putting it in a familiar memory context is subconsciously used by most people. Our organic memories possess a log of objects and people that we have encountered throughout our lives; those that we perceived to be the most unique amid the monotony, remain at the forefront of our thoughts. They are the first associated memories to come to mind. My attention is drawn to the differences in the area and those differences are what I am most likely to remember.” (Jinks) “Perhaps the most well-­‐documented and thoroughly investigated [number station] is the aforementioned UVB-­‐76 (now known as MDZhB). The Station is thought to have been broadcasting since the 1970s and has captivated radio enthusiasts for over 30 years. The station at first appears to be nothing more than a constant monotonous buzzing sound. However, the buzzing has occasionally been interrupted by cryptic encoded voice messages in Russian. It’s thought the nonstop buzzing sound is just a channel marker, keeping the frequency (4625 kHz) clear so that the occasional voice messages can be relayed securely.” (Duke) Student Images •  See slideshow [http://goo.gl/w0VEcs (pdf)] Presentation Participation after image-­‐use slideshow “Phone images and narrative” Instructions: Take a good couple of minutes and scan the photos you have saved on your mobile device. Choose three or four that strike you in some fashion. The images need not be uncanny to be useful. Study those images and see what pattern arises to you from them. Jot down a few words of reaction to this pattern, and then attempt to author a handful of coherent sentences that describe this pattern. Quickstart: -­‐-­‐ Choose three or four images from your device -­‐-­‐ Create a short narrative that describes a pattern you identify Image use •  What did you notice? •  Images range from compelling to uninteresting, but nevertheless remain useful to the student •  What was the nature of the images they collected? •  Static items •  Xxx •  What do you know about how they see the world? •  Display of interiority •  Rhetorical impulses: they try to make sense out of the world (good thing!) •  Emergent narrative: images within images: they highlight, and another story emerges Further Reading •  GaTech syllabus, Fall 2014: ENGL1102: “The Species of Memory” •  UGA syllabus, Spring 2014: ENGL1102: “Narratives of Travel”/ Learning Community “Climate and Sports” •  On Images: •  Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others •  Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida •  On Memory: •  Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way •  Jorge Luis Borges, “Funes the Memorious,” “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” •  Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (film studies); all his films •  Stanislaw Lem, Solaris •  Kathleen Ryan, “Memory, Literacy, and Invention: Reimagining the Canon of Memory for the Writing Classroom” •  On Walking: •  Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust •  W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants; Rings of Saturn •  J.J. Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker •  H.D. Thoreau, Walking Questions and Comments? Contact: [email protected] School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology Image ©R.E. Burnett, 2014